How Counting Came to Be

About this book

In this comic and fanciful tale of courage and ingenuity, cave girl Ugh Poppi goes on a quest to provide for her family. When she meets a new friend, they discover the value of creative thinking and the power of numbers and counting. When their last gourd smashes to the ground, Ugh Poppi's cave family needs her help. She sets out on a perilous adventure to gather gourds on the other side of the river. But she doesn't know how to find the Big Wide Open Place or the Not-So-Far-Away River with the Log Bridge that leads to the enormous Gourd Patch. She doesn't even know exactly how many gourds she needs to bring home before dark. And when she meets a helpful stranger, it becomes clear they have another problem: nobody knows how to count. But Ugh Poppi, whose name means "girl- who-thinks- too-much," meets every challenge with imagination and a positive approach to problem solving. By working together, she and her new friend create an astonishing invention that will change everyone's life forever. How Counting Came to Be is a beautifully illustrated and lively children's book in the tradition of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. Whether read aloud or solo, this book provides a funny and charming adventure where thinking, persistence, and collaboration lead to a life-changing discovery about math and the world around us.